


In Accord, Part Six - Reaching out

by ninemoons42



Series: In Accord [6]
Category: X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Archery, Assassins & Hitmen, Gen, Inspired by Art, Medieval Medicine, Sacrifice, Swords & Fencing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-09
Updated: 2012-03-09
Packaged: 2017-11-01 16:53:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/359132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42





	In Accord, Part Six - Reaching out

  


title: In Accord, Part Six - Reaching out  
author: [](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/profile)[](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/)**ninemoons42**  
word count: approx. 2370 in this installment  
fandom: X-Men: First Class [movieverse]  
characters: Charles Xavier, Erik Lehnsherr, Raven Darkholme, Sean Cassidy, Emma Frost  
rating: R [may go up in later chapters]  
notes: Continuing from [this](http://jamesorangecat.tumblr.com/post/15666553689/this-is-for-the-lovely-k-a-belated-holidays-gift), and [this](http://fassyfaceavoythere.tumblr.com/post/15721726522/charles-stops-and-looks-him-straight-in-the-eyes). [Part One](http://archiveofourown.org/works/331285), [Part Two](http://archiveofourown.org/works/334798), [Part Three](http://archiveofourown.org/works/341335), [Part Four](http://archiveofourown.org/works/345593), [Part Five](http://archiveofourown.org/works/349325). These are not the Charles and Erik you think you know.  
Work in Progress. Please heed the rating.

  
This time, when Erik dreams, he dreams of trees reaching for the sky. Black boughs whispering sinister songs. No benevolent shade to be found here, no temporary shelter. He looks up through the branches and the night falls heavily, dark and stifling. There are no stars, and the only light there is seems strange and smoky, like faint fires from far away.

There are strange smells in these dreams. Old dust, corroded blades, fouled water. He can smell rope. Strange that he knows it, but now that he's noticed it he can't get away from it. He can't stop breathing it in. Paper ash and scorched grass, rancid like fear and the terrible stink of the dead and of the dying.

The wind blows and the branches overhead creak and sway, crackle and groan and whisper. Old movements, disused, unsteady.

There could be messages for him here, Erik thinks suddenly. He follows the scent of hemp, the moaning of the wind. He leaves broken leaves and bent grass in his wake.

The shadows on the path sway drunkenly.

Then he makes the mistake of looking closer at the trees.

Bodies.

A bull, a hunting hound, a great bird of prey - all hang from the lowest boughs. The bird is limp, and even the deadly beak has lost its edge. As Erik looks up with dread, unable to tear his eyes away, it begins to shed the great feathers from its wings.

He picks a feather up, grateful now that he can look away from the sacrifices. This feather is gracefully curved, black barred in indistinct gray and white. Longer than his forearm and, in the flickering light of the dream, almost a living shadow in his hand.

A soft groan reaches his ears.

A human sound.

Erik drops the feather, draws his sword, and calls out. "Where are you!"

A whisper on the wind: "I am here."

Erik looks up.

Shadowed blue, smell of salt, boots on a branch.

A knot rising above the shoulder - rope wrapped around itself, thirteen times.

He shakes his head in anger and denial. Unbidden, the words spring to Erik's lips. "Don't jump. Don't you dare jump."

He wants to see that shadowed face, he wants to tear the rope away.

As Erik strains upwards to see him, somehow there is light, enough to see that the man in the tree is smiling.

"They wanted to hang me because I wanted to help them."

The man in the tree puts a pale hand up to the knot and to the rope wrapped around his throat - and leaps.

Erik cries out in his dream - and wakes up. There is a knife in his hand, but not for long. New instincts rising up. The blade is a flash, slicing through the still soft darkness of the early morning.

"Ah," someone says, quietly, and Erik's blood runs cold because he knows that voice, knows what stories it can tell, knows the terrible weight of past and present in it.

When Charles comes into the hut, there is a long streak of blood over the back of his left hand, and he is busying himself cleaning the knife that Erik hurled at him.

Erik is still frozen so Charles levels a smile at him - a thin sliver of amusement - and takes Erik's wrist in his uninjured hand, drops the shining knife into it, hilt first. "You really are getting better at that."

It is not the response Erik expected, and he is startled enough to reply. "Raven has been...diligent in correcting my faults."

"Which is all to the best," Charles says as he leans on the wall next to the bed. "There is nothing I can say except that I approve. I trust you to know this skill and use it as it is needed, except as limited by the agreement between us."

Belatedly realizing he's still only half-dressed, Erik reaches for his shirt and struggles to pull it on. "This rule is laid down upon everyone here?"

"Raven and I bear it most heavily, because," and Charles motions to the knife on his belt and to the hook riding his right hip. The hook on which he normally carries a quiver full of arrows. "And Armando, as well, who is a far better healer than I under any circumstances, and whose beliefs I cannot always share but will strive to uphold. But yes, it is true for all of us here. Do you wish to ask me questions about it?"

"No," Erik says at last, even as he buckles on his sword belt.

"Good, because I didn't come here just to be injured," Charles says, and the smile on his face is as light as stormy blue eyes and a multitude of scars can make it.

Erik favors him with a bleak look in return; he digs in his own pockets for a roll of bandages, and throws it at Charles.

"Be easy," Charles says. There is an actual laugh somewhere in the words, and Erik finds that he has to turn away.

"I came here to ask you for a favor," the healer continues.

"Ask," Erik says. "Or order me to do it. After all, I am here by your command, under the terms of your contract."

"Oh, honestly," Charles mutters, and crosses past Erik to sit at the foot of the bed, among the crumpled sheets. "Are you still thinking of it that way?"

Erik tries to smile at him.

Charles tilts his head and looks at him with both amusement and disbelief.

Erik tries to hold on to the image, and with it tries to dispel the wreckage that the dream left in his mind.

"All right, I have to admit it. I still cannot understand what passes for a sense of humor in that head of yours," the healer says at last. "But yes. A favor, which I came here to ask you for. Armando will be traveling out of the village for a few days, and he has asked me to escort him back to one of the cities to the west. I ought not to be gone for long, as he will be traveling back on his own. Two days at the most. Will you watch over the village in my absence? Over the children?"

"I can," Erik says, thinking of Raven and of Alex, of Emma. "Even over those who cannot stand to be near me."

"I have tried to explain matters to her," Charles begins.

Erik waves a hand. "It does not matter. My feelings are not important; my actions are. My deeds are what brought you to bring me here, and I will honor that compact between us. I will do as you ask."

Charles gets to his feet suddenly, and he looks like he's about to say something.

Erik watches, mute and surprised, as the other man shakes his head sharply, once, and then pulls his cloak closer around himself. Darkness on his brow, in the sudden clench of his hands, and he pushes out and past Erik without another word.

He follows Charles out the door, watches him move toward the infirmary, seeming to disappear in a haze of silvering sunrise light.

The children of the village greet that sunlight with smiles - even Emma, who is clinging to Raven's elbow and wrist, who walks carefully over grass and over sand.

"Practice later?" Raven asks as she walks up to Erik. "After this?"

"After this," he says.

He still doesn't know much about looking after children. He doesn't know anything about them, really, not even when he was little more than a boy himself, a boy learning how to shed blood, and running among others of his age and even those who were younger. None of them had been children.

He remembers nothing of his life before his first sword - nothing before learning how to fight.

In stark contrast the children around him seem bent on some other kind of industry, splashing salt water at each other, building heaps of sand up and kicking them down - things that make them laugh and smile.

Erik looks down at the basket at his feet, at Alex sleeping peacefully, one tiny fist waving about in the air. The crash of the waves drowns out the sounds of his little breaths.

Someone begins to shout nearby - Erik thinks it must be the little boy who likes to follow Raven around, the one with the thatch of dark hair and the strangely large feet. Erik looks up, and holds up a hand, and the boy pales and then blushes and meekly turns away, covering his mouth with one hand.

Alex slumbers on.

Nearby, Raven helps Emma settle into a patch of sand lit by indirect sunlight. Emma is still wearing her bandages, but she seems to be moving a little more easily now, a little less wracked with pain.

Erik watches the two girls put their heads together, watches Raven smile and present Emma with a seashell, watches Emma peer curiously at the ridges and run her fingertips over the smoothed-down edges.

Suddenly she looks up, and her eyes find him. Erik freezes.

The last time he'd looked into her eyes she'd loathed him.

There is still fear in every line of her.

He tries to meet her gaze.

And then, strangely, Emma sighs, and looks away, her face hidden briefly by a flash of sunlight reflected off a falling wave.

She might almost be smiling.

And then someone screams.

Several things happen all at once. Emma looks up, at him - no, past him, and what she sees makes her go pale.

His instincts are telling him to drop and run.

Erik gets up, steps away from the children, draws his sword partway, and turns around.

The boy with the red hair. He is holding one hand out - but not to Erik. Those gray eyes are looking at Emma.

Erik looks over his shoulder.

Emma is holding out a hand to the apparition.

She can see him.

Erik has too many questions, and he is reeling from the shock - but the high scream sounds again over the waves, rough with pain and with fear.

There's no time to think. There might not be enough time to act.

Raven tears past him, shouting. "No! Angel!"

A small girl lying face-down on the sand, water washing over the back of her head.

Erik shouldn't be running towards her - but he finds himself overtaking Raven, finds himself on his knees in the broken surf, finds his hands on Angel's limp frame, turning her over. There is a sickly gray tinge to her fine golden-brown skin.

He seizes her wrist roughly and feels for the beat of her pulse. It's still there, faint and struggling. He holds his other hand up to her nose and feels a weak warmth that ebbs and flows there - she's still breathing.

A flash of memory. A man who had fits like these.

He obeys Raven without question - lays Angel out on a dry patch of sand near Emma, around whom the other children are huddled, shivering in their panic. He watches Raven pull a flask wrapped in leather from her belt as he props Angel upright so Raven can tip a measure of dark green liquid down her throat. He keeps his other hand on Angel's wrist, counting out the beat of her heart.

And then Angel opens her eyes.

Before Raven can say anything, Erik stoops to meet Angel's eyes. "How do you feel?"

"I hurt," Angel says, softly. "But I can breathe."

"Good," and Erik holds her close, as gently as he can. "You don't have to move yet. I'll help you get up when you can."

A hand on his shoulder. He looks up at Raven's relieved and baffled smile. "You and Charles have a lot more in common than either you want to admit, Erik."

It's a moment for truth-telling. "Maybe."

She rolls her eyes at him - but in the next moment she puts her hand in his hair, tugging gently. "Apt pupil," she says, and then goes over to the children. Soft questions and frightened answers.

"Help me up," he hears Emma say.

He concentrates on Angel and she offers him a watery smile. She tries to get to her feet, but she's still shaky. He stands up first and pulls her up from the sand. He offers her a hand to hold on to.

"May I?" comes a whisper from his other side.

It's Emma, and her fingertips are cold on his wrist - but Erik offers her that hand anyway.

"I was wrong," she says, "my memories of that night are all tangled up. I thought it was you...."

"I was there. More than enough reason for you to hate me," Erik says.

"You saved me," Emma says.

"I did too little."

"Because of you, I live. It is enough to begin with."

Emma pulls on his wrist, and he looks at her again.

"And if it was not that - you know who I was looking at. You wanted to defend me from him."

From _him_ \- from the boy who comes to claim the dead.

"Why are you afraid of him," Emma says.

"Because I think he's come after me," Erik admits.

"No. I can tell you this much. I can do this much for you - though it is nothing as great as what you have done for me. But he's not hunting you. He told me this."

When the children can be mustered to return to the village, Erik is surprised that they cluster around him, and around Raven. He is surprised, and vaguely pleased. At the very least there is an odd warmth that seems to settle in his bones - and it stays there, and grows, enough to dispel the bad dreams. Enough to dispel the fear.

Enough that when Charles comes back, bleeding and bruised, Erik doesn't wonder why the others suddenly look to him - he doesn't have time, the healer needs help, and he simply goes where he's needed.  



End file.
